Wisdom's Grave 01 - Sworn to the Night

by Craig Schaefer

  “Thing is, I’m a little groggy from the drugs, so if you happened to have an accident? Well, you could be stone dead before anybody comes to help you.”

  “Tony—” Her eyes went wide. “What are you doing?”

  “Get this through your fucking skull. Nine police officers are dead because you sabotaged that raid in Bed-Stuy. Four more are in critical condition. You tried to kill me. Do you really think any uniform in this building is going to lift one finger to save you?”

  “You can’t do this,” she stammered. “You’re a good cop—”

  “I’m a cop whose partner is fighting for her life tonight, and I’m looking at the perp who knows where she is. Don’t ask if I’ll kill you, Helena. You’d better damn well know I will. After everything you’ve done, I want you to look in my eyes and ask the real question here.”

  He loomed over her. His fingers tightened around the IV bag.

  “Ask yourself if I’ll lose one minute of sleep over it.”

  * * *

  The hospital-room door swung shut at Tony’s back. Captain Traynor was marching up the hall, a pair of plainclothes detectives trailing in his wake.

  “Fisher? What were you doing in—”

  “She’s fine,” Tony said. “Listen, these ink dealers, Richard Roth’s buddies, they took Marie.”

  Traynor’s eyes went hard as flint. “Where?”

  “Vandemere. It’s an abandoned zoo, a couple of hours upstate. According to Gorski, there’s at least a dozen of these creeps holed up there and they’re armed to the teeth.”

  “I’ll get on the horn with the locals and have them send SWAT.”

  “Captain,” Tony said, “they’ve got my partner. Fugitive or not, she’s still one of ours.”

  He leaned in close.

  “Send everybody.”

  Fifty-Nine

  Marie sagged in her chair, slumped against the stainless-steel restraints, her head bowed. Her breath came out in slow, ragged gasps. Savannah studied her, frowning.

  “Why won’t you break?” she murmured.

  Marie’s voice came out as a rasping croak, her throat raw from screaming. Through the worst of the torture, in the scant moments when she was able to draw breath, she’d been repeating the same fervent litany over and over again.

  “…will hold in my heart the virtues of a knight. Mercy toward the poor and oppressed, and none for their oppressors. Humility. Honor. Absolute faith in my liege, and absolute trust. I will—”

  Scottie shook his head at her and shot Savannah a look. “Maybe you’re taking the wrong tack here.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “You have a better idea?”

  “Maybe. Lemme run this up the flagpole. I’m no tech geek, but I know a little magic—”

  “Magic is a science, Mr. Pierce.”

  Scottie waved a hand at her. “Tomato, tomahto. Point is, we do rituals here. And they work. I’m thinking I should round up the boys—who are getting restless anyhow—and we can get our lodge’s patron involved.”

  “Patron?” Savannah asked.

  He held up his fingers and curled them into claws as he flashed a perfect smile.

  “The King of Wolves,” he said.

  “You want her to run your little obstacle course, I take it? Like the prostitutes you abducted?”

  “Hey,” Scottie said, “you know the Kings are real. They built the Network.”

  “Their chosen emissaries did, but close enough.” Savannah tapped her index finger against her chin. “So you think he might be drawn to the sacrificial energy and…end result?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? That’s what makes it fun. Call it an experiment.”

  Savannah turned, studying Marie in silence for a moment.

  “I’ve just about wrung all the data I can out of her using conventional methods,” she mused. “All right, permission granted. Just one thing? I’ll be studying the energy output. I realize you gentlemen are…excitable. But please make an effort to kill her as slowly as possible.”

  Scottie stared at Marie. He ran his tongue across the tips of his teeth.

  “Bitch shot my best friend,” he said. “Trust me. You don’t even need to ask.”

  * * *

  The men of the lodge lined up, in order of seniority, to claim their weapons from the Hunting Wall. Scottie bit his lip as he saw Richard’s bokken hanging on the rack, the wooden training sword stained with the blood of his last victim. Never to be swung again.

  Well, maybe one last time. He left his own bokken on the rack and picked up Richard’s, resting it across his shoulder like a baseball bat as he strolled away to start the show.

  Normally he or Richard—he felt another sudden pang remembering his friend’s face, how happy he always was on lodge nights—would lead the sacrifice out personally. Of course, that was when they were dealing with petrified street rats who had been kept in a cell and starved for a few days. Marie might have been trembling and pale from her torture session, but she was still a trained cop with years of experience on the street. Better safe than sorry. He took a seat behind the console in the zoo’s security room and tugged a microphone over.

  Finally, he thought, a fucking challenge for a change. The King’s going to reward us for this one.

  He tapped a button on the console. On a flickering black-and-white screen, the steel restraints on Marie’s chair popped open.

  “Get up,” he said into the microphone. “Door’s open.”

  He could smell the suspicion wafting off her, it showed in her body language, but she did it anyway. The door led out of the monkey house, out into the cold and overcast night. In the distance, a storm front was rolling in.

  He called up a second camera feed, watching Marie as she stood uncertain and alone at the edge of the abandoned zoo.

  “Here’s what happens next,” Scottie said into the microphone. “You’re going to run. We’re going to give you a thirty-second head start. And then me and twenty of my best pals are going to hunt you down. All of whom were buddies with Richard, just so you know. You remember, the guy you murdered for his whore of a wife? Now, when we catch you, that’s when the real fun happens. Let’s just say it’s going to be like everything Dr. Cross made you experience, but worse. And very real. And it’s going to take a long, long time for you to die.”

  He couldn’t resist. He flipped a switch on the console. Across the park, a spotlight shone like a beacon of hope.

  “Fair is fair, so here’s a bonus offer. See the spotlight? Right in the middle of that tall grass, on a pedestal, there’s a revolver waiting for you. Six bullets is a hell of an equalizer—but of course, if you go for it, we’ll spot you. Risk it or don’t, it’s your choice.”

  His lips hovered an inch from the microphone.

  “Either way, you’re going to die tonight. See you soon, Detective.”

  He started the automated countdown. The zoo speakers crackled to life all over the park, trembling with a booming bass-horn drone. Then came the electronic voice, ticking off the seconds to Marie’s death: “Thirty. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight.”

  * * *

  Marie ran.

  Not toward the light. She knew a rigged game when she saw one. Her hunters would spot her from halfway across the park if she stepped into that spotlight and she couldn’t trust that the gun was even loaded. She went the other way, sprinting up a dark path toward the old aquarium habitat. She cast a quick glance at a cartoon signboard that showed the park’s layout.

  It was a big zoo. Lots of places to hide. Not that she was in any mood for hiding.

  Now she understood—this was the fate of Baby Blue and the victims they’d kidnapped before her. They’d been held here, forced to run this gauntlet of madness—and died trying to escape.

  These were the men responsible for the murders. They needed to be held to account. To be forced to stand and face judgment.

  They needed to be punished.

  As the timer counted down, she darted behind the filthy white w
alls of the aquarium. A short muddy incline led down to the outer wall of the zoo. She glanced up and despaired. The wall was a good ten feet, no handholds, and topped with concertina wire. She wasn’t getting out that way.

  “Coven knight,” hissed a voice from the shadows. A woman was crouching there, her eyes burning in the dark.

  Herself, again.

  This Other wasn’t like the knight who held her steady through her torment. This version of Marie had a sun-chapped and blistered face, with elaborate ritual scars across her forehead and chin. Geometric designs and unreadable glyphs puckered her flesh.

  “Where’d the other one go?” Marie whispered, crouching beside her. This Other wore ragged, loose leggings and a tunic of deerskin, clasped with ornate pewter. Her feet were bare and caked with black mud.

  “Your heart calls to the memory you need. And this was much like the night of our initiation.” The Other flashed a yellow-toothed smile. “Many salarymen short-sold our stock, thinking we’d die in the rushes. Oh-ho! Come morning they were poor. Downsized! And the profit was ours. Recall the ordeals you endured in the cah-pe-tol. Recall your training. You were taught how to fight this way, one against many.”

  “I don’t—” Marie shook her head, her fury battling with her helplessness as the countdown reached its end. “I don’t remember, I’m sorry. I know that I’m you, I mean, that you were me once, but I don’t remember.”

  The Other poked a broken fingernail at Marie’s heart.

  “Doesn’t matter. We are all inside of you. The knowledge is there. Trust your intuition. Adapt to your surroundings. And fight.”

  As the countdown hit zero, a new sound drifted through the frigid night air. Laughter. Howls. Whoops of delight as the doors opened wide and the men of the Vandemere Lodge went on the hunt.

  The Other was gone. Marie was alone now.

  Her mind raced. She needed a weapon. First, she needed to live long enough to lay hands on one. She looked at the mud, dug her hands in, and slathered it on. She smeared it over her face and hands, her hair, the white of her blouse, coating herself in earthy muck. Along the dark and winding paths of the abandoned zoo, it might be enough crude camouflage to give her an edge.

  Marie held her breath and listened. The sounds were moving, splitting up, the men scouring the park in small packs. She waited just long enough for them to spread out.

  If they wanted a hunt, she’d give them one.

  Sixty

  Tucker and Westwood prowled alongside what used to be the tiger habitat. On the other side of a low safety wall, the enclosure plunged down a twenty-foot drop to artificial rocks and a dried-up fake riverbed. The tigers were long gone, but the smell of musk and manure permeated the painted stone. Tucker’s head was on a swivel, his eyes wide and anxious as he gripped his machete like a baseball player going for a home run.

  “I’m telling you, you never should have let Richard or that asshole Scottie into the lodge,” he was saying.

  “We,” the older man said, flexing his hands around a tire iron, “voted on it collectively, Brother Tucker.”

  “I’m just saying, look what happened. We’re totally screwed. We’ve gotta think about where we’re going from here. Collectively.”

  Westwood took the lead along the curving path. “I’d rather we focused on the here and now, if you would. Tonight’s sacrifice is going to be slippery, and I’m tired of coming in second place. Also, this one is likely to put up a fight.”

  “She’s just a woman. Badge doesn’t make her any different from the rest. What are you so worried—”

  Tucker paused, feeling a tap on his shoulder. He looked behind him.

  All he saw was the crudely sharpened end of a branch spearing toward him, a split second before it punched through his left eye. He fell to his knees, clawing at his face and shrieking as the branch jutted from the ravaged socket and ocular juices dribbled down his cheek like egg yolk. Marie snatched up his fallen machete and charged at Westwood.

  He was faster than he looked. The machete clanged against the tire iron as he brought it up to parry her swing, and a second later she ducked as the iron whistled over her mud-caked hair. She lunged in, thrust with both hands, and drove the blade half a foot into his belly. Air gusted from his lungs, followed by a gout of blood that rolled down his chin like a closing curtain. Marie ripped the machete free, grabbed him by the belt, and shoved him up and over the wall of the tiger habitat.

  He screamed all the way down. Then his body broke on the painted rocks below. His eyes were wide and lifeless, staring up at the oncoming storm.

  * * *

  Scottie heard the screams. His feet pounded as he ran toward the source, five men at his back and another two coming up from the western footpaths. He stalled in his tracks as he looked down at Tucker’s body. The branch still jutted from his eye socket.

  “Shit,” one of his lodge brothers shouted. He pointed down into the tiger enclosure. “She got Westwood, too!”

  They were worried about two dead idiots. Scottie was worried about Tucker’s empty hands. The cop had a weapon now.

  His grip tightened around the lacquered hilt of his wooden sword. Good, he thought. Only makes this more interesting. The ending stays the same.

  * * *

  With her face slathered in dried mud and her eyes narrowed to hard slits, Marie crouched low in a scraggly clump of bushes. The brambles bit into her skin, scratching welts, but she forced herself deeper into the makeshift hiding place.

  She watched shoes thunder past, slapping the dirt-strewn path as they charged toward the fading screams. She had let the first one, the one whose machete she’d taken, live. Not as a mercy. She’d slashed one of his arms from wrist to elbow as a parting gift, opening an artery and writing his death sentence if the wound to his eye wasn’t enough to kill him—but she made sure he’d keep breathing, and keep crying out to his friends, while she ran for cover.

  He had stopped screaming now. Marie guessed he’d stopped breathing, too. Two down, eighteen to go.

  The last hunter passed her by. She watched him disappear around a bend; then she slithered her way from the underbrush. She’d deliberately lured the entire pack to the eastern side of the park.

  The gun, sitting out in the spotlight, was west.

  She rushed to the edge of the pool of light and froze. The gun was a nice piece, a .45 with a magazine loaded. Of course, no way to tell if it had any bullets in it. That wasn’t what gave her pause, though. Her senses were in overdrive, taking in every sound, every whisper of the wind and distant shout, adrenaline coursing through her veins. Her intuition told her that something was very, very wrong here.

  The grass. She realized that while the zoo had obviously been closed for years, someone was still tending to the landscaping. Everywhere but here. The ring of tall grass in the spotlight was overgrown, choked with weeds. Only the grass in the spotlight.

  She dropped down to her knees, getting low and sliding her fingers across the edge of the grass. They brushed metal. She touched the jagged, rusty teeth of the bear trap hidden in the overgrowth.

  No way to tell I’d come from this direction, she thought. There have to be other traps hidden in the grass. Lots of them.

  She could use that.

  * * *

  A fresh scream, shrill enough to shatter glass, turned Scottie’s head. He raced ahead and followed the sound. It led him to the edge of the zoo’s swan lake, a kidney-shaped dugout that had been drained years ago. Now fallen leaves floated on a few inches of brackish, stale water, runoff from the last rainstorm.

  A new storm was here. Black clouds, thick as smoke, blotted out the stars. Faint, slow drizzle came down, trickling fingers of ice along Scottie’s neck and dancing on shallow puddles. A threat of things to come.

  One of his lodge brothers was down in the dirt, sucking air through his teeth as his two hunting companions tried to pry the jaws of a bear trap from his broken leg. Scottie turned, fast, navigating by memory as he sprinted u
p a flight of stone steps to the old food court. Surrounded by shuttered and dusty booths, he crossed the faux cobblestone and leaned over the far railing. The elevated perch gave him a perfect view of the spotlit circle of grass.

  The gun was still there. She must have weighed the risks and the reward, realizing how long it would take her to ease her way across the trap-studded grass and back again, and decided against it. Smart girl, he thought.

  Not smart enough. This was his dominion. His hunting ground. He ran mental fingers over a map of the zoo, working out her movements.

  You went for the fence first. They always go for the fence, until they get a good look at how high it is. You didn’t jump for it, didn’t slice your hands up on the wire. No. You hid. Waited. You took out Westwood, bled Tucker so we’d follow his screams—thank you for that, guy was a prick—and used the distraction to make for the gun. You didn’t take the bait. You did take a couple of traps, though.

  A couple, specifically. Those traps weighed almost twenty pounds each and they’d slow her down. No way she could haul off more than two or three, tops.

  So why take them? Desperation, he thought, any port in a storm, any weapon in a fight. You dropped them on the way, hoping you might get lucky and whittle us down. So where are you going?

  Marie had run from the spotlight to the lake’s edge. Only one path, and the bear trap was dead in the middle of it. Scottie guessed the second trap would be a little farther up. Not too far. Speed was her best ally right now. That and the machete she’d taken off Tucker’s body. If she followed that path north…

  “The gates,” he said out loud. “She’s running for the main gates.”

  He’d picked up more hangers-on, seven of them now, looking at him like wide-eyed wolf cubs. Annoying. He hunted with Richard, or he hunted alone. All the same, they might be useful. He snapped his fingers at one of them.

  “You. Head along the lake path and try to find any more traps before some other idiot loses his damn foot. The rest of you, follow me. We’re going to circle around and cut her off at the carousel.”